If you have options with a strike of $8 and a market price of $6, you could exercise your option at $8, sell at $6, and bank a capital loss to use against gains elsewhere.
Or, wildly better, you could hold the options unexercised, and use that $2 per share for whatever you want, including paying capital gains taxes on other gains.
Burning up options on 100 shares to generate $200 in losses (and actually losing $200 of cash in the process!) to offset gains that will result in $30-60 worth of tax liability makes no sense.
